NEXT ATHLETE: KAZUO MATSUI

First Came the Pitchers. Then the Outfielders. Now New
Mets Shortstop Kazuo Matsui Leads a Third Wave of Japanese Exports To
America. But the Latest Talent Surge Doesn’t Stop with Baseball.
Or Japan

The Yankee imperialists are here. So are the Met and Dodger
and Oriole and Mariner and, of course, Nike imperialists. Some 8,000
miles from America, in a sterile domed stadium in Sapporo, they hunt
for resources to exploit, gems to bring home. Here, at Asia’s
Olympic-qualifying tournament in early November, they find plenty on
Japan’s national team. “Matsuzaka,” says one major
league scout, savoring the word like a rich piece of sashimi. “And
he’s their second-best pitcher.”

“Fukudome,” says another scout, shaking his head at the
talent of a hard-hitting outfielder. “See how quick his hands
are?” But the one they won’t talk about, the one they can’t
yet talk about, is the one everyone else is talking about: relentless
Japanese sports writers, American beat writers, even little old ladies
in souvenir shops. “Ritto Matsui,” they say, smiling. That’s
Kazuo Matsui a.k.a. “Little Matsui”—no relation to
the Yankees Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui, other than their shared
Japanese superstardom. Kazuo (please don’t call him Kaz) is the
switch-hitter with as much speed as Ichiro and nearly as much power
as Godzilla; the slick infielder with the firehose arm and intercontinental
range; the new-breed Japanese athlete, who respects most of his nations
baseball traditions even while his hair sports more colors than the
Shinjuku Gardens chrysanthemum beds. Scouts won’t speak his name,
afraid of tipping their hands (okay, they all want him), but his countrymen
can say it and do, at the tops of their lungs. The Sapporo Dome fills
with cries from the “oendan,” the super-organized cheering
section for Japan’s national team. Accompanied by cornet, drums
and Rising Sun flags, they chant their leadoff hitters name with earsplitting
enthusiasm: “Katsu… Katsu… Katsu… Ohh!”

“It is how fans cheered for me with the Seibu Lions,” Matsui
explains through an interpreter. “In Japanese, katsu means victory.”
In America, where international players are invigorating the national
pastime, the word “Japanese” increasingly means the same
thing. That’s why Kazuo Matsui, the gem who graces our cover now
and will grace our diamonds in the spring, is Next.

AN OCEAN has been crossed, a sea change registered. Japan has come to
major league baseball. And its arrival couldn’t be more timely
for the game sown round the world by American imperialism. Just as Commodore
Perry forced Japan to open up to the West in 1853, a generation of Japanese
players is opening the minds of American fans, sending fantasy players
scurrying to Nipponese websites. This new wave has also opened the eyes
of MLB executives. Thanks largely to the Asian invasion, baseball is
planning a World Cup (likely to happen in March 2005), where Vlad Guerrero
and the Dominicans will challenge Miguel Cabrera and the Venezuelans,
who’ll take on Japan and its Matsuis. Unlike at the Olympics,
Americans will play too. The colonies have become the colonizers. Nomo
and Sasaki and Ichiro and Godzilla have not only survived but thrived,
adding style and grace to a game marred by labor wars, taxpayer rip-offs
and, quite possibly, chemically cooked record books. First came the
pitchers, who showed the talent to no-hit big leaguers. Next came the
outfielders, who showed the talent to hit big leaguers. Now comes the
first infielder, who shows both the talent and temperament to assume
a big league leadership role. And Asia isn’t through with us.
In the wings are dozens of players not only from Japan, but also from
Korea, Taiwan and, down the line, China with the potential to make the
crossing. It is just one facet of the growing Pacific Rim influence
on American sports. Yao Ming and the Chinese basketball revolution,
Se Ri Pak and the legion of Korean golfers, second-generation Asian-Americans
like Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie and Dat Nguyen all are changing the face
of America's games, and erasing stereotypes along the way.

For now, though, all eyes are on 28-year-old
Kazuo Matsui, the newest Met. He’s been called one of the
top five shortstops on the planet, right up there with A-Rod,
Nomar, Jeter and Tejada. And he just might be the best pure athlete
the Japanese game has yet produced. There is no doubt he’s
a star. Fans know it. He received stacks of mail from supporters
of the Lions, his team for 10 years, begging him to finish his
career there. “It made me feel good to know people cared
that much,” he says.

Scouts know it. “I like him a lot,” says Robert Eenhoorn,
a former Yankees and Angels utilityman from the Netherlands who
now coaches the Dutch national team. “His feet, his arm.
He’s never out of position.”

Matsui knows it. He’s got a stars aura, even beyond the
glow from the orange mullet he sported at the Asian championships.

But he’s no hotdog. He doesn’t grab attention like Ichiro,
the shades-wearing, bat-twirling, scenery-chewing teen idol. Nor does
he command the reverence of the solid, stoic Godzilla, a modern samurai
and the embodiment of Japanese manhood. Kazuo is something in between.
He’s a talkative bundle of energy, with an affable nature common
to his native Osaka, Japan's second city. (There, the Hanshin Tigers are
loveable losers just like the Cubs, and Koshien Stadium is an ivy-covered
classic just like Wrigley.) Yet he’s always had an independent streak.
“I grew up loving the Tokyo Giants,” Little Matsui says bluntly.
“In Osaka?” He’s asked. There is no translation necessary.
He puts an index finger to his lips, says, “Shhh,” then bursts
out laughing. On the field, he’s an anchor: seven straight 150-hit
seasons (that’s for 140 games a year); a career .309 average; 36
homers and 33 steals in 2002,followed by a blowout performance in the
Japan-MLB All-Star series, where he went yard from each side of the plate
in one game. Last season he struggled with minor injuries but still hit
.305 with 33 homers and 84 RBIs, while keeping alive the longest consecutive-games-played
streak (1,143) among active Japanese players. Yes, MLB washout Tuffy Rhodes
is a home run machine in Japan (he’s hit 50 twice), and Matsui’s
stature (5'9", 183 pounds) won’t make anyone forget A-Rod.
When he took in his first live U.S. baseball game in Yankee Stadium this
fall, Kazuo couldn’t believe his eyes. “The players are enormous,”
he says. “The infield looked small.” But he is unlikely to
be intimidated. For one thing, he’s built like a tree trunk. In
fact, while Japanese coaches were slow to embrace weight training (they
feared bulked-up players would be too inflexible), Matsui has been pushing
lead for years. “I was a pitcher in high school, and I hurt my arm,”
he says. “I used to watch American baseball on TV, and I thought
if I could get that big, my arm would heal better and be stronger. That’s
a high schooler’s mind, but that’s how I got to love weight
training.” It helped make him what he is today: incredibly fast.
Earlier in his career, Matsui was dubbed the Barry Larkin of Japan, but
you have to cross more than an ocean to find a good comparison. He moves
like Andre Agassi, giving off the same restless vibe when he plays, in
constant motion before every pitch. On the base paths, his acceleration
makes you gasp. Fans and scouts in Sapporo were treated to an exhibition
of that speed when he ripped a ball into the gap and, as he rounded first,
saw he had a chance for a triple. “He just found another gear,”
says Rob Derksen, a former Orioles scout and the coach of the Greek Olympic
team. His arm is strong enough that he could play third base as easily
as second, where several MLB teams thought about moving him. (But not
the Mets, who’ve asked young shortstop Jose Reyes to consider a
switch to second to make room for Matsui.) “He’s such a great
athlete, I think he could play anywhere,” says Marty Kuehnert, a
broadcaster and columnist for the Japan Times who’s covered the
Japanese game for 16 years.

It's all the more impressive when you consider Matsui never played a lick
of infield until the pros. At PL Gakuen, which is to Japanese baseball
what Oak Hill Academy is to U.S. prep hoops, he was a pitcher talented
enough to throw in the annual national tournament at Koshien Stadium—the
pinnacle of success for Japanese high schoolers. He didn’t learn
to switch-hit until three years into his pro career. Longtime observers
say he's as good a natural athlete as they’ve ever seen in the Japanese
leagues, and that includes Ichiro, the fastest man in the majors. Scouts
say Kazuo is a half-step faster. He blushes when told that, shaking his
head in denial, just like he balks at the Agassi comparison. But it’s
notable that in his daily six-hour off-season workouts, he finishes with
an hour of tennis: “It’s a better way of cooling down than
jogging. We hit it to the corners to make the other guy run. Its fun.
But I’m not good at all.” Right. Don’t let the modest
statements fool you. He is supremely confident.

That’s why he’s coming to America after 10 years with Seibu.
“I have enjoyed it, and its been an honor,” he says. “But
you have a short time to play the game, 20 years at the most. I don’t
want to regret anything. I want to play with the best players in the
world.” American GMs used to question whether Japanese players
had the heart to hack it here. But that was before seeing them play.
Stars like Matsui risk a lot in jumping to the States: endorsements,
a cozy life back home, embarrassment in a culture that prizes saving
face. “If these guys are willing to give up everything they have
to play in the majors, that answers all the questions right there,”
says Pat Kelly, who played second base for the Yanks, Cards and Jays
and now scouts the Pacific Rim for the Dodgers.

The way Matsui sees it, the only risk would be in not trying. “I
don’t feel any pressure, he says. “I spoke with my wife, Mio,
after the season. She said, ‘Just don't do anything that will make
you regretful.’ She said to do what’s best for my career.
Even if that meant switching positions. I don’t have an unhealthy
attachment to shortstop,” he says. He’d move to second if
a team wanted, then bide his time and try to win his old position back.
Wouldn’t matter if he had to unseat A-Rod, Jeter or Honus Wagner.
“I am a shortstop,” he says, “and I want to keep that
dream alive.” His guiding principle doesn’t sound foreign
at all to American ears: Go for it.

WASN'T LONG ago that a player in Matsui’s situation wouldn’t
dare go for it. Robert Whiting, whose third book on Japanese baseball,
The Meaning of Ichiro, comes out in March, predicted 15 years ago that
a Japanese player would never jump to the majors. “Once players
saw they had the freedom to move,” he says, “the whole attitude
changed.” Hideo Nomos defection from the Japanese leagues, by retiring
and then declaring free agency, breached the dam in 1995. And Alfonso
Soriano’s brazen jump from the Japanese minors to the U.S. (he refused
to sign with Hiroshima after losing his arbitration case) punched a hole
in the country’s equivalent of the reserve clause. Players still
must wait nine years for free agency, limiting the flight, but America
grows more and more attractive. Japan has suffered a gut-wrenching decade
of recession that leveled the go-go economy of the 80s like a Tokyo earthquake.
The keiretsu, or giant corporations, which had always served as cradle-to-grave
caretakers of the salaryman, have laid off tens of thousands of workers.
Legions of homeless men now fill Tokyo’s parks, leaving little room
for kids to play ball. (Though in Japan, the displaced sweep the ground
in front of their tidy blue tarp shelters every morning.) The security
once promised to everyone who went to school and showed up for work is
a thing of the past. So, too, are the traditions that kept ballplayers
from seeking a better deal. Young people now encourage their stars to
head west. “Little Matsui should go to the major leagues,”
says Daisuke Ito, a twentysomething hotel worker and former high school
shortstop from Sapporo. “Its good for the country to show they can
play with the best.” Hideki Matsui, the former Yomiuri Giant who’s
been described in Japan as Cal Ripken, Michael Jordan, John Elway and
Bill Bradley rolled into one, has only grown in stature by leaving. His
mug is all over national ads, and a rock band called The Godzilla Spirits
performs in Pinstriped No.55 jerseys. “If he hadn’t gone,”
Whiting says, “people would have said he was a wimp.”

Still, saying goodbye isn’t easy. Every aspect of a Japanese athlete’s
life is scrutinized, especially the decision to bolt for the bigs. (Nomo,
Ichiro and Kaz Sasaki have been hounded with such tabloid tenacity that
each has boycotted the Japanese media.) For two years, while Kazuo toyed
with asking the Lions to post him, giving MLB teams a chance to buy
his rights, the press pumped out rumors of who was interested and for
how much, even speculating on how his extended family’s finances
might sway his decision. Though Matsui remains on good terms with the
media, what did affect him were the unwritten silent agreements that
bind Japanese companies and their employees. This is a culture that
still values authority. And it was that ethos, more than anything, that
kept him from leaving the Lions sooner. “I didn’t want to
get in a fight with them over posting,” he says.” I wanted
to be loyal to them.” (Not exactly play me or trade me.) Even
after deciding it was time to go, he dallied in announcing his departure,
pondering whether to represent Japan in the Olympics next summer. “I
think it worked out better, to take that time and get through the confusion,”
he says. “Because by the end I was more certain.” (Not exactly
show me the money.)

But the players will get bolder. And better. At the Asian qualifier, Matsui
wasn’t even the best performer on his team, a group of all-stars
drawn from Japan's two leagues (there are 12 clubs). Outfielder Kosuke
Fukudome showed great wheels and bat speed, lining the ball off every
wall in the dome. He’d have fit right in on the Marlins. Then there
are the pitchers, led by Daisuke Matsuzaka, who throws in the mid-90s
with sick movement, and Tsuyoshi Wada, a guy with eight different curveballs,
according to one scout. Meanwhile, the Koreans and Taiwanese, with less-developed
pro leagues, are watching prospects bloom into big leaguers. And since
Maoists banned baseball from 1960 to 1974, China is just starting to relearn
the game, soliciting help from MLB, which paid for Jim Lefebvre to manage
the national team. Asia really has arrived. Scouts marvel at the work
ethic, the diversity of talent, the intensity. “And the pitchers
all throw strikes,” says one. The only thing missing is American-style
power. As a Japanese baseball exec puts it: “Well give you 200 pitchers,
Ichiro, Kazuo. You give us some home run hitters.”

But the cultural exchange doesn’t please everyone. Attendance
and ratings have drifted downward in the Japanese leagues, partly because
of the economy, and partly because the country’s youth have discovered
soccer, skateboards and video games. Some big corporations behind the
leagues, like the supermarket chain that owns the Japan Series-champion
Daiei Hawks, are in dire financial straits. Daiei gave its popular power-hitting
third baseman, Hiroki Kokubo, to the Yomiuri Giants this fall for nothing—no
trade, no draft pick, no player to be named—just to unload his
contract. And while four of the nation’s five most popular sports
figures play baseball, there’s some concern that the game will
die the same slow death as the Negro Leagues did after integration.
None of which is about to halt MLBs global march. It’s one of
the few areas that give Bud Selig something to razz Paul Tagliabue about.
U.S. fans don’t care where Pedro Martinez comes from as long as
his fastball’s moving. So what if Ichiro is Japanese? He can rake.
MLB is seeding grassroots programs from Shanghai to Cape Town. This
year, four minor leaguers came from Germany. Bobby Valentine, who just
took a job managing the Chiba Lotte Marines, sees a brighter if different
future for Asia. “They have to create another major league division
where there are teams in Japan, Taiwan and Korea,” he says. “Players
have to get traded there, sign as free agents, and the winner from that
division has to enter into this round-robin. Now it’s a two-country
World Series, played in North America.” Sound crazy? Eight years
ago, during his first managing stint in Japan, Bobby V was laughed at
for calling Ichiro one of the five best players in the world. Whatever
form it takes, more cross-pollination is inevitable, and not just in
baseball. Asia is simply too big, too ambitious and too prosperous not
to assert itself in our sports-scape. The NBA has 314 million TV households
in China, thanks largely but not solely to Yao Ming. Korea’s rivalry
with Japan, and its growing prominence in baseball and soccer, promises
more major leaguers and World Cup successes. A 7'3" Korean teen
named Ha Seung-jin showed up at the Asian hoops championships, where
Yao is said to have told him, “See you in the NBA.” Taiwan
has already sent two players, outfielder Chen Chin-feng and pitcher
Kuo Hong-chih, to the Dodgers 40-man roster. And Thailand is just now
starting to produce world-class competitors in golf and tennis. The
secret of Asia’s success is simple: combine a large population,
a love of competition and a hellacious work ethic and, hey, you’ve
got players. Throw in the sons and daughters of Asian-American immigrants,
and you’ve got even more.

IT'S A hoary cliché, but sports really do cross boundaries. So
does money. In Tokyo a few weeks ago, some 300 eager, mostly Japanese
Jerry Maguire wannabes sat in on a seminar sponsored by the sports agency
SFX. Not one of them snickered when Rob Urbach, the agency’s executive
vice president, told them, “Sports is a universal language.”

A language that’s exchanging vocabularies across the Pacific.
Just look at what’s happened in baseball. Twenty years ago, Japanese
ballplayers trained year-round, looking down on lazy Americans. Now,
most big leaguers start working out a month after the season ends, if
not sooner. Then look at Kazuo Matsui. He has a healthy respect for
his national pastime, including its cautious nature. Against Korea,
he twice came up with no outs and a runner on second. Both times he
had the green light to swing away; both times he bunted, sacrificing
successfully his first trip, then fouling off two attempts in his next
at-bat before advancing the runner with a sacrifice fly. “It was
a tight game,” he says. “We needed the win.” But like
other athletes of his generation, and more and more young people in
his country, he is also intent on finding his own path. He scoffs at
old-school Japanese overtraining, where ruthless coaches would put players
through tortures like the 1,000 fungo drill, hitting them ground balls
until they dropped. “Maybe 100, but not 1,000,” Matsui says.
“What’s important is your concentration level when you practice.
I don’t like being tired in vain. It doesn’t work.”
As he charts his path to America, Matsui has one overriding desire:
To learn from playing with the great players. “I want to take
what’s best from both places.” Twenty years ago, that would
have been a joke in America, a sacrilege in Japan. Now? Its Next.